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Monday, April 11, 2016

Viv Forbes: Carbon Delusions and Defective Models

The relentless war on carbon is justified by the false assumption that global
temperature is controlled by human production of two carbon-bearing “Greenhouse
Gases”.

The scary forecasts of runaway heating are based on complicated but
narrowly-focussed carbon-centric computerised Global Circulation Models built
for the UN IPCC. These models omit many significant climate factors and rely
heavily on dodgy temperature records and unproven assumptions about two trace
natural gases in the atmosphere.

The models fail to explain Earth’s long history of changing climates and ignore
the powerful role of interacting cycles in the solar system which determine how
much solar energy is absorbed and reflected by Earth’s atmosphere, clouds and
surface. Several ancient societies and some modern mavericks, without help from
million dollar computers, recognised that the sun, moon and major planets
produce cyclic changes in Earth’s climate.

The IPCC models also misread the positive and negative temperature feedbacks
from water vapour (the main greenhouse gas) and their accounting for natural
processes in the carbon cycle is based on very incomplete knowledge and
numerous unproven assumptions.

The dreaded “greenhouse gases” (carbon dioxide and
methane) are natural gases. Man did not create them - they occur naturally in
comets and planets, and have been far more plentiful in previous atmospheres on
Earth. They are abundant in the oceans and the atmosphere, and are buried in
deposits of gas, oil, coal, shale, methane clathrates and vast beds of
limestones. Land and sea plants absorb CO2 and micro-organisms absorb methane
in deep oceans.

Earth emits natural carbon-bearing gases in huge and largely unknown and
unpredictable quantities. Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and various
hydrocarbons such as ethane, methane and propane bubble out of the ocean floor,
seep out of swamps, bubble naturally out of rivers, are released in oil seeps,
water wells and bores, and are sometimes delivered via water pipes into
drinking water. They are also released
whenever carbon-bearing rocks such as coal and shale are eroded naturally,
catch fire, or are disturbed by earthquakes, construction activities or mining.
The vast offshore deposits of frozen methane are released naturally when
geothermal heat or volcanic intrusions melt the ice containing the methane.

Earth also entombs carbon in sediments and organic matter transported from the
land by rivers and buried in swamps and deltas, or swept from the land into the
oceans by typhoons and tsunamis. These will eventually become limestone, shale
and coal deposits probably containing fossil evidence of a long-gone human era.

Recent measurements of the distribution of carbon dioxide over the surface of
the earth produced surprises – several of the heavy concentrations of carbon
dioxide do not follow man’s heavy industry but occur over places like the
Congo, Indonesia and the Amazon (possibly seasonal emanations from soil or
forests).

Earth’s crust is flexed daily by the gravity-driven Earth tide – this movement
opens and shuts joints and pores in rocks and soil and allows earth gases to be
squeezed towards the surface. The crust is also dragged, raised and lowered by
sub-surface movements, which release more trapped gases.

Volcanic activity also produces large but variable emissions of carbon dioxide,
particularly if igneous rocks intrude beds of coal, oil shale or limestone. The
periodic massive outpourings of undersea basalts along the mid-ocean ridges
cause large oceanic degassing.

Oceans and the biosphere are wild cards in the carbon cycle. Warming oceans,
rotting vegetation, ruminants and termites all expel large and unmeasured
quantities of carbon bearing gases. And cooling oceans and growing animals and
plants take up carbon compounds. And if there is more CO2 in the atmosphere,
oceans and plants will take up more, thus providing a natural stabilising
effect. Eucalypt forests extract carbon dioxide for growth, but also emit
hydrocarbons from leaves, producing the blue haze on distant hills on hot days.
Soil carbon comes and goes depending on weather, biological activity and farm
management practices.

Where are the measurements of the production and consumption of atmospheric
carbon compounds by the vast herds of antelopes and reindeer, cattle and sheep
or zebra and wildebeest? Who measures the effects of termites and locusts,
droughts and floods, bushfires and biofuel plantations, bacteria and fungi,
algae and krill, seaweeds and sardines, oceans and volcanoes, grasslands and
forests, decomposing rocks, sedimentation and underground waters? And what
about the heat, CO2 generated and waste products buried by huge cities?

Earth’s total supply of carbon does not change – it just moves continually
around the great carbon cycle residing temporarily as gases, liquids or solids
in the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and lithosphere.

Currently the supplies of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are recovering
gently from record lows. No one knows exactly where it is all coming from but
limited measurements and extrapolations indicate that about 96% of the CO2
added annually to the atmosphere is from nature. The only part of the carbon
cycle that is measured with reasonable accuracy is the remaining 4% of
atmospheric CO2 produced through man's recycling of coal, oil and gas.

We are asked to believe that we can use dubious estimates and forecasts of this
one small component of the carbon cycle as the main input for computer models
claimed to forecast future climate for decades ahead.

To use such dodgy forecasts to justify disruptive energy policies is a costly
delusion.

2 comments:

This article is a good reference point for me. Good to read an holistic view of the global workings of carbon and gases. Thanks for this reference work Viv. I liked especially that of course we neither create or destroy matter, including carbon, and that the long natural cycle. Also that by an enormous margin carbon release is the work of Mother Earth.It is good to see the science becoming more understood and more settled. People begin slowly to absorb the natural reality.Its truly hot in Bangkok today, and the sun is out.

Further, Of critical interest is Viv's last web reference. That is to the Notricks web site, and the consideration of sources of Co2. The comments there also good, in particular the work of Murry Salby the scientist who was sacked from McQuarrie University for his ability to actually think and his applied physics and mathematics.

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